Overview participating exhibitions
Terra Cognita - Urban Jungle
2012
Terra Cognita - Urban Jungle
Yan Preston
Forest (China, 2011)
What is Utopia, and what does it cost to build it? FOREST shows how they are trying to construct a utopia from scratch in the Chinese city of Chongqing. The goal is a model city incorporating five ‘ideals’. A woods is one of them. But rather than planting trees and patiently waiting for them to grow, full-grown trees are being uprooted for a sort of prefab forest. The promise of a beautiful future is thus being realized through methods that strain the resources of both culture and nature.
Biography
Yan Preston (China, 1976), now British, was born in Henan, China, lived for a long time in the county of Yorkshire, England, and worked for three years as an anaesthesiologist in Shanghai. When she returned to England in 2005 she began a new career as a photographer and visual artist. Her work has been shown in the National Portrait Gallery and York Art Gallery, among other places. She is presently working on a doctorate in photography at the University of Plymouth.